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CHAPTER 271: TELEPATHIC CONFERENCE 1

Alright then, let’s get this information-sharing session underway!

For the telepathic link, let’s go with the five of us here plus the core team—Barbaru, Ars, Irs, and Urs. Sound good?

「Ahem, ahem—can everyone hear me?」

「Loud and clear, my good sir! How are things on your end—」

「Kinu-chii! I’m taking real good care of the egg, okay? Lately it’s been—」

「It’s been a while, everyone! And seriously, not one of you has contacted me! Don’t you think it’s about time you came back for a visit—」

「Ah, Aun-san! Perfect timing! I wanted to ask you about the expansion of the Plainevelt Dungeon—」

Whoa there! Too many people talking at once! The telepathic lines are a complete mess…

It’s true we haven’t been giving updates lately, what with the large-scale liberation battle and the supreme-class dungeon runs and all. But maybe they were holding back from contacting us out of consideration?

「Alright, hold on. Let’s go one at a time. Ars, first off—sorry for not staying in touch, things have been hectic. Depending on what we discuss here, I might return to Plainevelt for a bit, so can we start with other topics for now?」

「Understood!」

「Next, Irs and Barbaru. Things are going exactly as we hoped on our end. Calvados’s advance party should be arriving in Plainevelt right about now. Given their strength, there’s a good chance they’ll clear the 35th floor’s Gigantic Centipede.」

「Really!? That means we’ll need to start preparing for the 40th floor soon!」

「My blade is ready!」

「Same here! I’d also like to start drafting plans up to the 50th floor. What’s the situation on dungeon points?」

「With Plainevelt’s growing population, the number of adventurers entering the dungeon has increased as well! We’ve built up a decent amount of points, but if we plan on summoning boss-class monsters for the 40th and 45th floors, it’ll be cutting it close.」

「Hmm… By the way, have you two come up with a rough concept for floors 35 to 40?」

「We’ve been fleshing out that snowfield/snowy mountain idea you mentioned, Aun-san! Randomly shifting weather, thin oxygen levels typical of high altitudes, blizzards that completely mess with your sense of direction… and in the middle of all that, monsters optimized to perform at their peak in such a hostile environment. Even the ‘safe zones’ will be too cold for proper rest. We’d like to incorporate those elements floor by floor!」

「That sounds awesome! Now we just need to decide what monsters and bosses to use…」

Assuming Calvados sends over high-level parties with solid dungeon-clearing experience, we’ll need something in the snowfield area that can really slow them down.

A good monster for that would be—oh! That’s it!

「Hey, remember the SS-rank Ice Lich? What if we make it the boss of the 40th floor, and put another boss on the 45th floor—once we’ve saved up enough dungeon points?」

The Ice Lich is a special evolution of a Lich we found in the Ruins of Silence. Whereas regular Liches summon skeleton-type monsters, Ice Liches summon ice golem-types. Considering even an S-rank Lich summoned that many, we can safely assume an SS-rank Ice Lich would summon even more—and faster.

「If we go with a mid-tier SS-rank for the 40th floor, we probably won’t have enough points left to summon a boss for the 45th… But! If we treat the 45th boss as a ‘spawn later’ kind of deal, that should work out fine!」

「Um, Aun-san! Would you let me take charge of designing the 40th floor area?」

「Sure, but do you have something in mind?」

「Yes! While I was checking the dungeon features the other day, I discovered that we can add special gimmicks to boss arenas using dungeon points. So I thought—what if we place five magical ice pylons in the boss area that boost the Ice Lich’s MP regeneration? Unless all five are destroyed, it would essentially have infinite MP. What do you think?」

「Wait… you can do that?」

「Indeed! Now that the dungeon has grown so large, we can use points to unlock new features!」

So, expanding the range of Plainevelt city on the 1st floor and increasing the population has improved absorption efficiency, letting us do more with dungeon points? Man… there’s still so much we don’t know about how dungeons work.

Still, Barbaru’s idea is seriously compelling. If we can boost automatic MP regen, the Ice Lich won’t just summon more golems—it’ll also have enough leeway to use magic attacks and buff its summons with support magic.

On top of that, given how well this pairs with the snowy terrain, we can put adventurers at a huge disadvantage. From their perspective, this setup would be way worse than just giving the boss higher stats.

And considering the Ice Lich is already SS-rank, once we enhance it with an arena gimmick, even a full top-tier team of 4–5 from Wislo—like 【Empire】—would need to be thoroughly prepared. Even then, they’d probably need multiple attempts to beat it.

「Alright, then! Let’s go with that for floors 36 to 40! As for the 45th-floor boss, we’ll pick it once we’ve saved up more points.」

「Understood!」

「I’ll give it my all!!」

Okay—now, all that’s left is Urs’ report.

It’s about the mysterious egg we summoned on the 4th floor of the Phantom Castle… Even the core team doesn’t seem to know much about it, so let’s hear what’s been going on over there!